Unlocking Success: Salem Reporter’s 5-Month Journey to Audience and Revenue Growth

Hey, and welcome to the Paywall podcast. This is episode number 48. I'm here with Tyler Channel from Paywall Project. Welcome, Tyler.

Hello.

Hello. How's it going today? We're gonna, we're gonna do a little case study here on a local news publisher that's absolutely rocking out paid subscriptions and audience development. We're gonna show you how in just a few short months, subscriptions have been going in excess of 15% with a bunch of paid trials in queue to turn on as well, audience growth through a free registration. So if you're a local news publisher, this is the episode for you. All right, cool. We're going to talk about Salem reporter Tyler. Can you give us a little backstory on, on this? You've been working, I know you've been working closely with them a lot of the discovery. You've discovered a lot of cool stuff as far as growing their revenue and audience. Where are these guys? What are they doing?

Yeah, so they're a digital only publication. They've always been digital. They've never had a print product based in the Salem, Oregon region, which is the capital city of Oregon. And they're heavily focused on local news. You can see their categories if you're watching this on YouTube. City news, schools, politics, economy, community obits. And now more recently, something that's top of mind in that region is something called a payroll tax. And they've been covering that story heavily just because of it's ongoing and something that's being debated anyway. They are, I would say, a model for any publisher that's in the local news space on how to set up your site. They churn out free registrations like crazy. A lot of people sign up to, to view content. And not only that, not only do they get free people signing up, they also get them to convert. And a large part of that is because of their very local hyperlocal newsletters that they send out on a day, on a daily basis. They've got a paid newsletter that goes out to people who pay and they've got a free newsletter that goes out to people that are on, on that free list. They are doing everything that we typically suggest on this podcast.

Awesome. Awesome. All right, so we're going to, we're going to get into, deep into that. Just. I want to set the stage though, in terms of how long have they. Have you worked with them when. Because they were using a different system before you turned on leaky paywall. And how much time do we have here?

I've been.

What was their situation Before.

Yeah, I've been with them, working with them for maybe a year, maybe a little bit more than a year. They came to me not running leaky paywall. They were running a different system and we're running into issues with that. And so we, I think it was in May of this year that we got them over to leaky paywall and started turning on the, the free registration and things like that.

What would you say were the main problems you they were having with their former setup?

I think they were just having technical issues. People weren't able to access content or not entirely sure on what was causing them the most trouble. Obviously I think their free registration was not set up like it is with leaky and just general support issues with their last vendor.

Gotcha. Okay, cool. So that's. So since May, that's about five months. We have some data that we're going to share and we have the switch over to this framework where you have a free registration that gives you access to, to content. And then it sounds like there's a free newsletter that comes along with that. And then if you pay you, you, you get a subscriber only newsletter as well.

Yeah, yeah. And all the publishers listening and they're thinking, oh my God, I have to do two newsletters. Oh my God, that sounds terrible. This paid newsletter is not that much different than they're free. It's just a little bit of an added bonus. It's not like, like they're creating this 500 article multiple. It's just a small bonus that comes with that free or comes with that paid subscription. If you're listening to this, you don't have to go above and beyond. Just something a little bit extra is enough to do this.

I think they have an afternoon newsletter for paid subscribers.

That's right. It's like a. Think of it as like an evening update, like a special. Okay. This stuff happened in the morning, but here's something that we're currently working on that's going to probably go out tomorrow.

I think that's how they approach Earl, almost like early. So you're. Instead of waiting till the following morning to publish, they're doing an extra Whatever's new for that day.

Yeah, I think that's how they play it.

Gotcha.

Gotcha. Yeah. And it's not like there's 50 articles, it's just maybe one or two and maybe a little blurb and, and, and that's it. And that's. There's high value even in that for a local news subscriber.

Yep. Okay, so let's, what I thought I would do is jump into, we could take a look at how they're set up real quick, how this registration is working. I wanted to take a look at the newsletter real quick as well to show their. And their, their content. Their. You said the ultra focus on their community and doing the town hall report, doing sort of the heavy lifting of the town hall reporting is what really converts drivers for sure. Yeah. Okay. The. As far as other revenue streams go, let's just touch on that first before we dive into those major things. I see they have some advertising on the site. Do you know, is this network or is this, do they sell directly?

They sell directly and I believe they also have a, a local partner. It's not a, it's not an ad network, but someone that actually will go out and sell ads. Yeah, it's something that they're doing that's new. And then along with the ads, they're also bringing in revenue through obit submissions. So people can pay to have their obituary listed on the site. So people are starting to do that as more funeral homes become aware of that option. It's a much cheaper alternative than listing it in a traditional newspaper typically. And so yeah, you can do it all on their site. You can actually pay for it. And then this shows up in the WordPress dashboard for them to easily add it to their site. So not a big lift. And then lastly with the, with the advertising side, I believe they're looking at doing newsletter ads. I don't know if they're currently running any, but I think that's something that they're looking into because they have an extremely high open rate for their newsletters.

Yeah. Sponsored newsletters probably maybe.

I'm not quite sure what they're looking at, but with the open rates that they have, I think they could command just about whatever they wanted.

Yeah, that's great. Yeah, we're gonna, we'll share a little data too at the end in terms of how things are going with the free registrations and the paid subscriptions. But that, with the free registration that really does blow up your email list.

Yeah.

Okay.

They've grown that newsletter quite a bit since they, they've been on board. Yeah.

Okay.

Thanks to that pre registration, no news, there's no newsletter widgets, no pop ups. This is all 100, 100% driven by the pre registration.

God, I'm resisting jumping into that, but I do want to look at this obituary submission form.

Yeah, let's talk about it.

I clicked, I went to the Obituaries. I clicked on submit an obituary, and it looks like the way this works is you fill out all the stuff, create the obit, and then you hit next and then that takes you to. What does that take you to? Payment.

That's right. Yeah. You pay on the spend. Once you pay, it'll enter that data into a draft post in WordPress for Salem to then go in and check it out, fluff it up, and then publish it.

That's a really clever and simple way to generate some extra revenue.

Yep. Are they going to get rich off of it? Probably not. But is it a nice little, like, bonus? Absolutely.

Yeah. It's a service, too.

Yeah.

And this is. This can be accomplished really, with any form builder, right?

Yeah. Yeah. This is actually WP forms.

Okay.

So super simple to set up. I'd say almost every publisher probably is running WP forms already in some capacities. Try it out, create a form, let people pay for it, and then turn on the WP forms, post submissions, add on, and that'll. That'll automate most of that for you.

Okay, Sounds good. All right, cool. So, talked about advertising.

Or you could just go to Paywall Project and we'll take care of it for you.

Oh, right. Nice. Okay. Yeah. If you haven't been listening, Tyler. Tyler runs Paywall Project in Morganton, West Virginia, and he works with a whole number of local news publishers. That's his specialty on building audience and building revenue. And so if you need something turnkey like, you just don't want to manage anything yourself, really, other than your content, then Tyler. Tyler is your guy there. How's that for a plug?

I'll take it, thank you.

Okay. Anyway, but the benefit is you work directly with these news publishers. You. You learn a lot about what's actually working and not working.

That's right. Yeah. I always tell publishers that the benefit of coming on board is I. We see what's working with other publishers, and so that data and that insight can help drive revenue for them. So that's the bonus.

Yep. And that's as it should be. We just like to geek out on subscription strategies here. Yep.

Yeah.

Okay, so let's. Speaking of subscription strategy. So here's the strategy. We've covered this before. We're going to cover it again. But the way the free registration and then is set up is you get one free article per month. That's how the leaky paywall meter is set. And then when you hit that, when you finish reading that article, you get on the second article. So I've Already read my article. I go to the second article, I get this. This story is free for you. Registration. You can enter your email, enter a password and then it will unlock that article and add you to the free newsletter list.

That's right. That's right. Okay. Yeah. And that happens in real time. So someone enters that email address, they enter that password, they hit submit. There's no waiting, there's no going to the inbox to click a special link. It's. It unlocks that story in real time.

So there's no pop up. This happens in content. So it's good on mobile.

That's right.

And then of course you have the email address that gets added to your free email list.

That's right.

Who to send the free newsletter to. And then you only get one more right after you fill this out.

That's right. So you get access to that article you're looking at. That's, that is, that's it. And then after that you'll start seeing the upgrade message to pay.

To pay. That's right. And that's a very restrictive setup. I talk to a lot of publishers about what to set the meter to. That's a very big question. The answer is here. It's you have the meter set to one free article, any article you want. No, no bother, no pop ups, no, no assault on your, on your user experience as a reader. But when you hit the second article, then you get this nice box that says the story's free. You just need an email and a password.

Yeah.

I will say that this outperforms newsletter pop up boxes because it's writing content. It's not annoying. You're starting the nurturing process with the one free before you get here. And you get better readers too because you're introducing a little piece of friction which forces people to enter their email address and choose a password. You don't get a lot of the spam bots or humans that really don't care. You're asking someone to choose a password. They have to be some level of serious to actually fill this out. So your email list is good. Yeah. Language is important here. If you're setting this up, just copy this language, tune it for your publication.

Yep. Yeah. This was actually an adjustment from what the Washington Post was doing. For all of you local news publishers model yourself after what the big boys are doing on how they're out there, how they're approaching their pre registrations and their digital subscriptions.

I will say some of what they're doing.

Yeah, it'll work in the early days, I used to get pushback from local publishers that the New York Times strategy won't work for us. I think we're past that at this point because paywalls in general were a bit more. People were a bit more resistant to them, but I think they're much more proven than they once were five, six, seven, even ten years ago.

So. Absolutely. Yep. And don't be afraid to draw the line in the sand and say, hey, this is. You have to register now. It works. And the newsletter that, the free newsletter, which we'll look at in a second, adds a tremendous amount of value to the person that registers. So you can see that the language here says that you'll get the news, the top stories directly in your inbox. That is essentially the biggest. Yes. You satisfy the, the need to get access to the current story, but the reader knows that they're going to get the newsletter too, which they want anyway, and, and that's convenient to them. So.

Yeah, yeah.

And if they want more, then they pay. That's right.

That's right. And I know that a lot of publishers are a little bit frightened by this restrictive, like we call it the one and one strategy. One article free for the public and one article free for free signups. But if you're sending out a newsletter and you're doing it often, consider that an additional taste of your content alongside the free stuff that you're giving away and also any content that you've marked as free on your sites. Salem does do that on occasion. They've got stuff that they want to be always free. People are able to get a taste of your content. Don't be afraid. That's not happening. Because I know that's the first thing that a lot of publishers are fearful of when they set up or when they explore the idea of setting up a restrictive pre registration paywall.

Yep. Just do it. Yeah. Test it.

Just do it. Yeah.

Take it on as a test. Do it for 30 or 60 days.

Yeah.

As a trial. You can always take it down if you don't. If it doesn't work for you. But it will.

So yeah, it will.

It'll work.

Yeah. People will do it. Yeah. You'll get some spam. People will put in fake email addresses and stuff. It happens. But if you're using mailchimp or any of your newsletter services, those will usually not actually even make it onto your list. They'll be removed automatically. And don't worry about it. It's a small percentage of people that will do that. I've had publishers that set up the double opt in with this setup. Don't do that. It's way too much friction. They have to go to their inbox, they had to click on a link. I get the desire to make sure that they're legitimate and that their email address is functioning but the small percentage of people that actually go around the paywall in that way, it's not worth messing with that anyway. That's a different topic.

Yeah. And two, just two quick technical points. Make sure you install the free registration, the captcha for registration that we have and also install the IP blocker that we have so you can't just right click and get around.

Yep.

Paywall. Yeah. Going cognito. Okay, good stuff. All right, let me, let me jump to what, what happens when I my newsletter sends me back to the website. So I'm in this case if you're watching I'm logged in and I've used exhausted my one free article. But I saw something in the newsletter that I really liked and I was like I want to read this article. So I'm going to click on this link and then we get what we call the upgrade message here. Yeah, I will just say quickly, keep it simple. Use a button. Always use a button for pre registration for paid subscription. This just says upgrade your account. A big blue button and then use benefits language on here. So it's the title is local news you can count on. So the benefit is I can count on this. I'm going to hold officials accountable. That's a benefit to me. And then of course there's features 24.7Access and you get the premium subscriber only email. But try to think how does your publication make your reader's life better? How do you make your reader the hero in your in their story? That's really the key to converting, helping convert paid subscriptions. Yep.

Yeah. And that last point on that list, the clutter free experience. Salem focuses on this a lot. Trying to make sure that they're not overdoing the ads or having pop ups or making it complicated. They want it to be seamless, they want it to be easy and they want people to pay. And so to do that you have to declutter the experience.

That's a great point. I would say if you're apologizing for the ad experience on your website, you have a clutter problem.

Yeah, for sure.

And I get that all the time. Publishers be like I'm reviewing their website and they're oh, I'm so sorry about the about we're redesigning the site. If you feel that way. Yeah, you need to really peel back because with reader revenue, when you really want to make it work, like Salem is making it work, you need to build a very good experience for the reader, for both casual readers, the free registered readers, and your paid readers. It needs to be a good experience. And it's not hard, it's actually easier. You just simplify things and. And be very careful about your ads. And it's really, it's cool to hear that they're going after advertising like one on one instead of doing the network ads, which unfortunately forced the publishers to put them everywhere. And they're popping up all the time. And it's such. It's super annoying.

Yeah, it's usually something that doesn't work very well for local news publishers either, because your traffic is not in the millions. And even if your traffic is in the millions, that's even not enough in a lot of cases to generate any meaningful revenue from the ad network. So if you can, if have the time and can put in the effort to get local advertising, I would highly recommend going that route versus letting the ad networks dictate your site clutter experience.

Yeah. And the revenues are better for sure. Once you establish relationships and you get those advertisers running, the revenue is better. The ad experience, the reader experience is better. And you can think sponsorships now, which is really the game changer for online advertising. You're getting sponsors into not only the website, the free registration, the newsletter, articles, events, that sort of sponsorship theme, which is a nice elegant way to basically serve up advertising, can span across your entire network of touch points for your readership.

Okay.

All right, so let's jump into the newsletter and then we're going to talk results and then we're done. I thought I would just show off the newsletter and we talk about it quickly because it's such an important part of driving paid subscriptions. And this is. I do actually get the news from the Salem reporter, Tyler. I'll say a couple things about it and see if you see if I missed anything. Yeah, but this is the free newsletter. There's really three. Three parts that I find are really important. One is it's a personal introduction to each one. So there's a good morning. And this reads like a human actually wrote this. Not AI, but the actual publisher or author that's here. And that's powerful. Personal newsletters work. Even the big guys, Wall Street Journal, they're personalizing their newsletters like crazy there. We did an Episode with Leslie from Newsletter Glue, and it's on our blog if you want to look it up. But she really leans into how to personalize and why it's important for your newsletter. But anyway, personal intro. Then it's simply a matter of. We got nice imagery. Imagery here. Titles of articles, a little bit of excerpt. That's it. This is pretty standard stuff. And then if we head to the bottom, here's the town hall we talked about earlier. These guys are really leaning in local. But if we go to the bottom, you'll see that we have principles. Like, almost like a mission statement. Right? Like, who are we and what are we doing here? Why are we. Why do we make your life better is really what this section says. And then you have two. Two important things. One is pay for obituaries, use the service, and two is subscribe. And that gets you the evening newsletter. Right. So note that these are not annoying the free registered readers, but they're always there on every single newsletter, every single time. And this isn't. I mean, we can nitpick on this. They're using a big font and a link. They should probably have a button and maybe a little more copy for the. About the benefits. But it works. Clearly, the numbers argue that it's working.

All right, what?

Did I miss anything here?

No, that's it. That's it. And this is all newsletter glue driven. And there. It's not an RSS feed of content.

It's.

They're choosing the stories. Super, super easy to do with newsletter glues. So if you're not using that, check it out. And you can make your newsletter look exactly like this if you want, without a lot of fuss.

When you're working in WordPress and you don't have to go out to Mailchimp or any. You're, You're. You're building your story in. In WordPress, it's publishing on the website and getting sent by email in one shot. So.

That's right.

Cut your workflow in half.

That's right.

Okay. All right, so now I promised some. Some results.

Sure.

I want to show you the insights that are coming off of this. This is a period of time. This is new paid subscribers, new free subscribers, new trial subscribers, because they have. We didn't actually go in and show the subscription offer. Let me do that really quickly before we jump into that. So if I hit upgrade, there's another piece of Genius 1. I love it offer. That's great. You're not making your readers do math. It's. Here's the Big button. Subscribe now. Now they're digital only. If you're print and digital, that's a little more challenging. But make it two. Two offers. It's digital or print? Digital. And that's it. Go recurring annual if you can. Salem Reporter's doing it a little different. They have a paid trial here. It's 10 bucks. You get three months and then the full amount kicks in. It's a. If you're going to do a trial. This one works. You can copy this super interesting piece of data. At the bottom here. It says you can choose the annual plan and save 17%. It's barely promoted. But what's the percentage of annual.

Yeah, I think it's. I think it's the majority. When I last looked, I think more people go for that than the actual three month. That's a trial.

So they should, they really should switch this to the annual promotion.

Yeah.

Maybe have an expensive monthly option. But anyway, let's go back to the numbers. Okay. We have 71 paid subscribers here. We have 640 free subscribers. That's so 10 of their actual paid new paid subscribers. Is the ratio between that paid subscribers and free subscribers. 71 versus 640 over 10.

Yeah.

And then the new trials are in here too. They haven't converted yet to paid, but I'm sure they have.

They have because they've paid 10 bucks already. So they're not technically a free trial, they're a paid trial. So you could add them in as part of new paid subscribers. But obviously the goal is to get them to convert after three months to 10 bucks a month versus 10 bucks every three months.

If they all converted, you'd have over 120, maybe close to 130 paid subscribers versus 640 free. That's 20% of paid versus free. But what's amazing here is if you look at this chart, you'll see that the pink line here is the free registered readers and then the blue line here are your paid subscribers and that there is a relationship between free and paid in the peaks compare. So it underlines how important it is to really build that free list up. And they will. And a chunk of them will convert quickly.

True. It's true. Yeah. A lot of them will convert almost right away. They'll sign up for free. They'll read that first article, they'll go to the next article. Okay, done. Just let me. I want to see it all.

Just. Yeah, yeah. Because you've given them this nice seamless experience on your website. The user experience is good. You're not blowing up pop ups at them. You're asking them to register at the right time. They've already seen an article. They want the next one. They want the newsletter. This is all. This is the way a relationship funnel should work. And it does. And we have the numbers here to look at it. Okay, so that's it, I think. Anything else you want to cover?

I think that's. I think that'll do it.

Okay, awesome. Have a nice user experience. Set up the free registration. One free article on the meter. One free article. After you register, send the free newsletter. Make sure your newsletter has upgrade messaging at the bottom. Great place for sponsorships. It sounds like they're working on it. And what you'll see is you'll see, and we see this across the board with publishers that have this set up is you'll see this relationship between new free registered subscribers that come in versus your paid conversions. And you have a really nice, healthy ratio between the two, which will help you predict your future revenue. Thanks, Tyler.

Thank you.

All right, we'll see you today in the future.

Yeah, let's do it.

All right. Gonna have some fun. All right, thanks. Thanks for listening and stay tuned for the next one. See ya.

All right. That was good.